Morgan face-to-face: 58-42 to Coalition; Seat of the week: Eden-Monaro

The latest Morgan face-to-face poll, conducted last week from a sample of 893, shows a slight improvement for Labor, up 1.5% to 32% on the primary vote with the Coalition down half a point to 45.5% and the Greens down 1.5% to 10.5%. This translates into a one point improvement on the respondent-allocated two-party preferred measure, from 59-48 to 58-42, and a half-point improvement on the previous election method, down from 55.5-44.5 to 55-45.

UPDATE (28/5/12): Essential Research has Labor losing one of the points on two-party preferred it clawed back over previous weeks, the result now at 57-43. Primary votes are 50% for the Coalition (up one), 33% for Labor (steady) and 10% for the Greens (steady). Other questions gauged views on the parties’ respective “attributes”, with all negative responses for Labor (chiefly “divided” and “will promise anything to win votes”) rating higher than all positives, and the Liberal Party doing rather better, rating well for “moderate” and “understands the problems facing Australia”. Bewilderingly, only slightly more respondents (35%) were willing to rate the state of the economy as “good” than “bad” (29%), with 33% opting for neither, although 43% rated the position of their household satisfactory against 28% unsatisfactory.

In today’s installment of Seat of the Week, it’s everybody’s favourite:

Seat of the week: Eden-Monaro

Taking in the south-eastern corner of New South Wales, including Queanbeyan, Cooma, Tumut and the coast from Batemans Bay south to Eden and the Victorian border, Eden-Monaro is renowned throughout the land as the seat that goes with the party who wins the election. Until 2007 its record as a bellwether was in fact surpassed by Macarthur, which had gone with the winning party at every election since its creation in 1949, but while Eden-Monaro stayed true to form by being among the seven New South Wales seats to switch to Labor with the election of the Rudd government, Liberal member Pat Farmer held on in Macarthur. The seat bucked the statewide trend in 2010 by recording a 2.0% swing to Labor, in what was very likely a vote of confidence in the popular local member, Mike Kelly.

Perhaps explaining its bellwether status, Eden-Monaro offers something of a microcosm of the state at large, if not the entire country. It incorporates suburban Queanbeyan, rural centres Cooma and Bega, coastal towns Eden and Narooma, and agricultural areas sprinkled with small towns. Labor’s strongest area is the electorate is the Canberra satellite town of Queanbeyan, excluding its Liberal-leaning outer suburb of Jerrabomberra. The coastal areas, which swung particularly heavily to Labor in 2007, can be divided between a finely balanced centre and areas of Liberal strength at the northern and southern extremities, respectively around Batemans Bay and Merimbula. The smaller inland towns are solidly conservative, but Cooma is highly marginal. The area covered by the electorate has been remarkably little changed over the years: it has been locked into the state’s south-eastern corner since federation, and its geographic size has remained fairly consistent as increases in the size of parliament cancelled out the effects of relative population decline. Outside of the interruption from 2007 and 2010, when it expanded westwards to Tumut and Tumbarumba, its boundaries since 1998 have been almost identical to those it had before 1913.

But they were very few. Rome tolerated all religions so long as they were not a political threat.

Most christians who died for the church, did so at a later date and were put to death by their own i.e. sects which were deemed heresy by the other ‘christian’ sects (and who managed to dominate).

If one were to ‘add up’ the numbers of christians who died at non-christian hands, and those who died from going against the prevailing orthodoxy, you’d discover the numbers overwhelmingly from the later.

The Romans did a big business in mass slaughter by and of animals, showing great enterprise in arranging dramatic forms of killing, so if they didn’t throw any Christians to the lions, it was likely an oversight. While record keeping at the time wasn’t the best, and many early Christian texts have their implausible moments, here’s what we can say with reasonable certainty:

1. During the early Christian era, the Romans executed some prisoners using animals, sentencing them ad bestias, “to the beasts.” The beasts in question included dogs, bears, boars, and lions.

2. Christians were executed by the boatload during that time, often in cruel and unusual ways, with animals regularly playing a role. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, wrote letters en route to execution in Rome predicting he’d be thrown to the beasts. Polycarp, bishop of

Submitted by hoopyfrood (NOTE:

Smyrna, was threatened with being thrown to the beasts but as it turned out was finished off by the sword. Possibly no one saw more animal action than the Christian priest Saturus — reportedly he was

The House was informed that both Mr Hunt and Mr Husic had proposed that definite matters of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion today.

In accordance with the provisions of standing order 46, the Speaker had given priority to the matter proposed by Mr Hockey, namely, The impact of the carbon tax on jobs and the cost of living , 3:30:28 PM.
The proposed discussion having received the necessary support, 3:30:51 PM
Mr Hunt, 3:30:53 PM, addressed the House.

So Hockey did not speak to his own MPI? Is there a special at Hungry Jacks?

yer, v.good, he might have reminded tip that Howard had to ditch the ministerial code of conduct because there were too many going overboard, children overboard, the wheat board, and plus a few wars his mob involved us in that were not justified…talk about sleaze and selective memory, all right.

1. During the early Christian era, the Romans executed some prisoners using animals, sentencing them ad bestias, “to the beasts.” The beasts in question included dogs, bears, boars, and lions.}

These were not often christians - it was a very small & non-descript sect. Most deaths at Roman hands were for political sedition NOT religious reasons. It was only every when ppl were a political threat.

[2. Christians were executed by the boatload during that time, often in cruel and unusual ways, with animals regularly playing a role. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, wrote letters en route to execution in Rome predicting he’d be thrown to the beasts. Polycarp, bishop of

This is mostly rubbish MSay … Ignatius was a renowned propagandist, who was LATER acclaimed by the church for propaganda purposes.

The actual history (documents/evidence) does not support this supposition. What we see now, in terms of documentary evidence does not gel with physical evidence in terms of time and numbers — its an incredibly long and in-depth story.

I’m not about trashing your beliefs MySay, but if you’re interested in the REAL story it might be wise to look beyond what is on the surface.

Howes is giving Gillan on Sky an education in how manufacturing industries work. It will all count for nothing because she still has a mindset of ‘but, but, but’ when talking to anyone other than the Oppn people.

This is mostly rubbish MSay … Ignatius was a renowned propagandist, who was LATER acclaimed by the church for propaganda purposes.

The actual history (documents/evidence) does not support this supposition. What we see now, in terms of documentary evidence does not gel with physical evidence in terms of time and numbers — its an incredibly long and in-depth story.

If it was in Quo Vadis then that’s good enough for me. Deborah Kerr could not possibly lie.

These were not often christians - it was a very small & non-descript sect. Most deaths at Roman hands were for political sedition NOT religious reasons. It was only every when ppl were a political threat.

Howes is giving Gillan on Sky an education in how manufacturing industries work. It will all count for nothing because she still has a mindset of ‘but, but, but’ when talking to anyone other than the Oppn people.

Howes end up telling Gillan he wants Canberra to stop going round in circles and talking he said/she said and to concentrate on the problems of people losing jobs. Said he’s not interested and doesn’t care what Pyne says, etc.

So immediately Howes interview is finished and Gillan says ‘well plenty of other people are interested in it and …… so after the break off we go to have another little session on it. Not me, I’ve switched off Aaaarrrgghh!

If one’s evaluating “leadership” I’d say “brilliant”, esp for the former, who completely changed the way elections were fought – and still are (though that may change with IT non-msm media conversion) – and, with his use of the aeroplane and radio (then very new technologies) he’d already made existing electioneering outdated before Joe Goebells emerged as a propaganda genius.

That his style of electioneering, political communication with voters – using all media, esp via radio & later TV (introduced for the 1936 Olympics) – are still a dominant style, adopted even by democracies, is a measure of his brilliance as a political leader. That, as a leader in military, cultural and social policy making and implementation was truly horrific, obviously did not stop other politicians (inc ours) from adopting the political/ voter-communication innovations he introduced. In this way, as he (with Goebell’s help) created C20′s dominant electioneering and political communication paradigm, he was a brilliant leader.

If it was in Quo Vadis then that’s good enough for me. Deborah Kerr could not possibly lie.

I loved Deborah Kerr in film so I think you are correct. She was one of those actresses who deserved an Oscar but never got one, unlike some of those who did only to sink without a trace.

However, I’m pretty sure a lot of the “history” we get from the cinema is heavily laced with poetic licence. Could be wrong though – I’m sure there were characters called Jack and Rose aboard the Titanic.

There i found it the below was also inclueded, not being over bearing on this i hope i just love history.

Loved rome, its sad they are letting their ancient ruins become more rundown , but tge amazing chariots on top of buildings ect
Any way heres some more history….

( Roman executions typically were considered a form of public spectacle. When coinciding with a game day, they usually took place during the midday break between the morning animal hunts and the afternoon gladiator matches. A favored method was exposing an unarmed criminal to lions or bears. Since it’s pretty clear that Christians were at times sentenced to death by beast (see 1 and 2 above), one may surmise that some of them met their end via lion in front of a Colosseum crowd, but we have no sure knowledge of this. The entertainment value of executions was apparently low due to their sheer number — many people found them boring, either leaving for lunch or sticking around and writing letters to friends about the tedium.

5. You have to think the killing of animals might have eventually gotten dull as well — it’s estimated that 9,000 beasts were slain during the inaugural games of the Colosseum alone (possibly an exaggeration; another source says 3,500 during 26 events). Over time more exotic animals were introduced to hold the crowd’s interest: lions and panthers turned up in 186 BC, bears and elephants in 169 BC, hippos and crocodiles in 58 BC. Pompey brought rhinos to Rome; Caesar wowed ‘em with giraffes. The ever-growing number and variety of animals required put a considerable burden on the supply chain. In his Natural History Pliny the Elder tells us lions were originally hard to catch (the idea was to chase them into covered pits), but later it was discovered they could be subdued by throwing a cloak over their heads. Elephants were captured and tamed by beatings and starvation. A major source of animals was the Roman army, whi

I’ve always wondered what the voters in your electorate see in that overweight slug. What has he ever done for the area?

Janice – nothing much during the Howard years and we’ve had much more since 2007 under both Kev and JG. Most things that have been put into the electorate by Labor have been claimed by Baldwin to be his doing. A new boat for the rescue squad was nowhere in sight until Kev gave money for it – Baldwin claimed credit for it.

He panders heavily to the RSL and Clubs full of oldies and they love him. He does the lovely son act very well and fawns over them all. He is notorious for embellishing the truth and it is quite infuriating but he is well protected by the editor of the local paper and gets enormous coverage on radio as well. Not sure about the bottom half of the electorate tho.

Some dope (filling in for drive-time) on 774 announced that this afternoon we’re going to talk about “does sex still sell?”

Wow, did anybody who’s anybody notice the dogwhistle?

Of course, was it going to be about child pornography in Store Catalogues? Women in scanty underwear selling anything from men’s watches/perfume to cars to well, just about anything?

Nah, it was about Thommo and the prostitutes.

First up, long segue, by ??Filton/Milton from Fairfax into the topic de jour.

Filton/Milton: It’s so exciting, so mesmerising, the sex scandal and Thomson.
And it’s really got legs, and it has so much more to tell.
Yawn. Really.

After long intro about how this is REALLLY important, and how Flinton whatever doesn’t even know that the leaking from the Privileges Committee could make said leaker end up in jail for 6 months (what do these fkers from the press gallery actually know about what they’re supposed to be reporting about??) we’ll have a little music before we get down to action.

First, though, we’ll read a few texts.
For balance a couple from either side, then the REAL first one was “I’m turning you guttersnipes off” – my sentiments too.

Just thought I’d let you know the calibre of reporting in the world’s most liveable city (some time) Melbourne.